Smile for Me
by TennisWriter456
Summary: Suddenly I want more than anything to see his smile, to feel it grow within me. I want him to smile because a smile means something; a smile means that maybe his nightmares have gotten better. A smile means that maybe he's a little bit happy. A sign that maybe, just maybe, he's not as broken as his face would suggest. Smile for me, Eren.


**hey sexy**

 **thanks for clicking on my story ;)**

 **just some eremika fluff to brighten up your day**

 **i will ride this ship even if it burns up in flames and sinks to the bottom of the pacific ocean it doesn't even matter I WILL BE THERE BLESS EREMIKA**

 **i really wish that this had happened**

 **(in my head it totally did, probably, at some point?)**

 **enjoy, cry if you want, i did**

 **please review :)**

 **xoxo**

* * *

Smile for Me.

 _When was the last time he smiled at me?_

* * *

I'm not paying much attention, but I think someone is calling my name. I blink and see Armin standing in front of me, his fists up and his eyes wide. Then I look around and see that we're in a large field, all of us together, in our brown jackets and our flushed cheeks and the perpetual anticipation in our chests. I remember now. My moments of being lost, wandering through the labyrinth of my mind and my memories and my fleeting desires, are over. I remember that I'm in the Cadet Corps—that we're practicing hand-to-hand combat—that Armin begged me to be his partner because, "I'm honestly afraid of fighting anyone else..."

"Is this right? Do I hold them like this?" he asks. He's staring at his own fists. I reach forward and squeeze them, making his fingers tighter, and lift them up a bit higher.

"Make sure you're protecting your face," I say. "That's the most important part. And keep your fists tight."

"O-okay."

He blinks, like a puppy whose first meal in days has just been placed in front of him, and then furrows his brow and nods with renewed determination. As Armin clenches and unclenches his fists, bounces on the heels of his feet, moves in circles around me, I tell myself that I'll never let him use that stance. No, I'll make sure that he never becomes a victim. Because as I watch Armin, I know that even if his fists are perfect, his stance flawless, his punches swift and his kicks powerful, he'll only be able to protect himself for so long. So I have to be there to finish it for him. I have to protect him when he can't protect himself.

"Go ahead. Punch me," I say. He stops, lowers his hands. "Don't drop your hands."

"Oh, right."

"Punch me, Armin."

"But what if I—?"

"Don't worry. Just punch me." I gesture to my stomach. "Right here. Punch me."

He takes a deep breath and shuts his eyes, shuts them tight, and extends his fist until it makes contact with my stomach. I hardly feel anything.

"Don't close your eyes, you'll lose sight of your goal. And don't be afraid of hurting me. You won't hurt me. Punch me as hard as you possibly can."

He opens his eyes and clenches his fist again. I nod to him, touch my stomach once more. When he punches I can feel his desperation, I can feel the worry that he'll find himself in a type of situation where his opponent won't welcome punches so willingly. I flex my muscles and tell him that that one was much better, that he just needs to stop holding back.

"Thanks, Mikasa," Armin breathes. I see him relax and he gives me a sullen smile that seems sad, feels sad, but doesn't look sad. "I appreciate you helping me. I just can't picture myself ever using these techniques. And if I ever had to, well...I don't think they would do me much good."

I don't respond. He smiles again and clasps his hands behind his back.

"Thanks anyway, though."

We stand in a comfortable silence, looking around. I see the familiar faces. Some laughing, some crying, all tired and hungry and broken. A different number of pieces for every face. Some are broken in two, some in one hundred, some in a million. I wonder if they can tell just by looking like I can. Some are punching, kicking at each other, others stand and speak in hushed tones. In this mist of faces, faces I recognize, there is one face that I can see so much more clearly. He's on the other side. He doesn't notice me looking at him. He's with Reiner, and he's trying to fight him. His face is the most broken of all.

"Eren looks really into it, doesn't he?" Armin chuckles. I nod silently. Reiner has a smile on his face, his muscles making Eren appear like a pile of bones. Armin stands beside me and we watch them, Eren enacting various moves, probably asking things like, How did you get your muscles so big, What's the best way to knock someone out, Have you ever really fought anyone before. All while Reiner stands with his hands on his hips, looking down at Eren's enthusiasm with an expression of indifferent contentment, answering his questions.

"Let's go see what they're up to." Armin begins to walk over there. I walk beside him and think to myself that Eren doesn't need these skills either. I have enough for the both of us. Eren looks over and sees us walking toward him but, as I'm hoping he will in the very depths of my frighteningly cold heart, he doesn't smile. Instead, he furrows his brow and tightens his fist, and I can read his lips saying, Come at me, to Reiner.

"Hey," Reiner greets us. I cross my arms as Armin waves, says hello.

"Don't get distracted! I'm serious, I really wanna get good," Eren interrupts. Armin and Reiner laugh as my eyes scan his face. He's not looking at me. He's looking at Reiner. He won't look away from him. "We're wasting time. How am I gonna be in the Scouting Regiment and fight Titans if I can't even fight a person?"

"Relax, Jaeger," Reiner says. "It's not like you'll ever have to fight people."

"How do you know?"

"Besides, if you _really_ want to get good, I'm not the person you should be talking to." Reiner nods his head toward me. And then, finally, Eren looks at me.

I see a reflection of the world in his eyes. Maybe it's not the world. Maybe it's only my world. It doesn't matter. It's interesting that nobody can ever decide what color they are. Blue, green, in between, neither—the color of my home. They sparkle, voices and memories and desires hidden behind steeliness that fades only when he lets slip a moment of innocence, a return to days when his eyes didn't have to sparkle like that. When they could sparkle in happiness and satisfaction with the arms of childhood that encased him. I see myself in those eyes and never have I been able to look away once I've made contact. I stare into them until I feel the ice within me melting. I stare into them until I feel a warmth, like the one in my red scarf, seeping through me and slowing my heart. I worried, at the beginning, that these emotions would weigh me down, distract me, keep me from being able to protect what I need so desperately to protect.

But that's not how it is. The warmth drives me forward. His eyes are like reminders of what I need to do. So I do it.

They're so beautiful.

"You think I should fight Mikasa?" he says. He blinks those beautiful eyes. "But you're so much...bigger than she is."

"Please. You know as well as I do that she'd take me down in a second," Reiner replies.

"Reiner's right," Armin agrees.

" _Fine_ ," Eren sighs. With much more enthusiasm than Armin before him, he jumps forward and throws a punch directly at my face. I dodge it. He's always been very easy to read. He throws another punch. I dodge that one. I haven't even uncrossed my arms. I wasn't expecting him to actually attack me.

"Fight back!" he cries.

"I don't want to hurt you."

"Could you stop me treating me like a baby and just attack me already?"

I decide that, to make him happy, I'll do what he asks. But I'll use a light attack. I don't want to hurt him, not now, at least. He throws another punch. This time I grab his wrist and wrench it behind his back, then push him to the ground and straddle his back. I make sure to be light on him. He hasn't done anything stupid to really warrant this, but he did ask for it.

"Ow, Mikasa!"

Reiner and Armin are laughing as Eren struggles beneath me. I push against his back harder, until his face is pressed up against the ground and his voice is muffled. I lean down and begin talking in his ear.

"Don't attack so stupidly. You're easy to read. A child would be able to avoid your attacks, they're so obvious," I say. "And don't swing your arm so wildly. Have a goal and stick to it."

He stops struggling and lays still as my words fall against him. I can feel his muscles relax, can feel every tremor and breath of his body, and a strange sensation comes over me. I feel an overwhelming desire to press my lips against his cheek. I wonder how he feels, having my breath fall upon his skin like this. I glance into his eyes. They're still sparkling and I catch my heart in my throat. When I close my eyes—whenever I'm in darkness—I see those eyes there and I feel an emotion of I-don't-know-what clogging my throat.

"Don't fight so boldly."

"Okay, okay, I won't, just get off," he says quietly. I stand up, pulling him with me. He jerks out of my grasp once he's regained his aggression, and dusts himself off and purses his lips and looks away. I wonder, then, what would have happened if I really had pressed my lips, so lightly, to his cheek? Would he have yelled at me? Would he have been silent? Would his skin have grown hotter and hotter with each moment that I let them sit there? Would he have smiled at me, like he did when we were so much younger and I was still trying to smear the blood from his hands onto mine?

Suddenly I want more than anything to see his smile, to feel it grow within me. I want him to smile because a smile means something; a smile means that maybe his nightmares have gotten better. Maybe the tears have stopped welling in his eyes every morning and every night and every time he takes a look at the shattered image of his life. A smile means that maybe he's a little bit happy. A sign that maybe, just maybe, he's not as broken as his face would suggest.

 _When was the last time he smiled at me?_

 _Does he smile at all anymore?_

 _Smile for me, Eren._

* * *

 _Whisper in my ear._

 _Smile for me._

I sit in the dim, orange darkness of the cabin and stare at my plate. I've already eaten half, but my stomach still feels empty. Or perhaps it felt full at the beginning. There's a strange ringing in my ears and I still see him when I close my eyes, even though I can open my eyes and see him just the same. Armin sits on my right, Sasha on my left. Connie and Annie across the table. They're having a conversation about techniques with the maneuvering gear, potential malfunctions, things that I never think about. I've always had a knack of letting my instincts take over—that has never failed. Armin's cheeks are flushed with passion as he speaks, Connie is enjoying the senseless argument, Annie is as silent as ever. Sasha asks me if I'm going to finish my meal. I give the rest to her.

Across the room, at a table with Jean, Reiner, and Bertholt, he sits. He's gesturing wildly with his hands, the way he does when he's desperately trying to convince someone of something that the other person really does not want to be convinced of. His lips are moving emphatically, his food nearly untouched, and it looks like Jean is arguing with him. Reiner and Bertholt sit silently in the wake of their conversation. Eren doesn't look happy. But he doesn't look unhappy, either. I notice myself clenching my fingers together in my lap as I watch him. I feel shivers on my body even though I'm sweating.

After a few moments, he finally glances over and sees me watching him. Our eyes meet. At the very second that I feel my heart about to burst, my breath about to disappear completely through my lips, Sasha reaches up touches my hair.

"Oh, Mikasa, you have a terrible knot in your hair."

"I do?" I reach back and feel the unkempt bump on my head. I begin trying to unravel it.

"Probably from all that training today," she says. "Here, I'll get it."

I turn to face Armin as Sasha attacks the knot. I feel her fingers pulling, pushing, inevitably unsuccessful. My hair does what I ask of it more often than not, but when it does rebel, it is nearly impossible to control. Armin gives me a sympathetic look. I wish that I hadn't been distracted, because I want to feel Eren looking at me again. Want to feel those eyes examining every part of my face, my body, my skin.

"Stop, you're just making it worse, Sasha. Move over a little bit, I'll handle it."

He's suddenly right there behind me, standing over us. We glance up at him, her hands still in my hair. He gives me a strange look then, like there's a deep, dark secret hidden within him that he's struggling to suppress. Like he needs so desperately to undo the knot in my hair—the same hair that I cut because he wanted me to.

"All right, if you say so, Eren." Sasha does as he asked and he sits down right where she had been. He reaches up and before I can prepare myself, steel myself for the sensation, his fingers are in my hair. They're much more gentle than Sasha's were. I can feel him inch closer, until his chest is nearly touching my back, while he works out the tangle. From the corner of my eye I notice Jean watching us.

"How'd it get so tangled?" Eren says. I shrug, and I will with all my heart that he keep talking. His voice is right there by my neck, and I can feel every syllable collapsing against me. Storms, waves crashing and crashing and crashing, warm and cold all at once, creating a storm on the surface of my skin that slices down to my core. He's speaking very quietly, his voice almost at a whisper, yet I hear a tsunami. "I mean, I know hair-care isn't exactly top priority, but you should watch it."

I recall Jean telling me on that first day how pretty he thought my hair was, and I wonder if Eren agrees.

I want to ask him why he came over here even though he seemed content with the others. But I don't. I hold my tongue because I don't want to hear my own voice, not even my own breaths, for fear that they will drown out his.

"And I wish you'd get that lonely look off your face," he murmurs. His voice is right in my ear now—just as mine was in his this morning. I catch my breath. He won't notice, I know. He won't notice the tension in my muscles, the quiver of my lip, the rising heat of my skin. When he breathes out into my ear, unintentionally close (intentionally close?), I want to close my eyes and arch my neck, turn my face to the sky and lean back against him. But I remain as I am.

 _Whisper in my ear._

"You just look miserable," he says softly. I can feel the knot in my hair coming undone. His fingers moving through the strands pull gently at my scalp, and the electricity from his fingertips travels down to the very base of my spine. My defenses begin falling down. "Even with all your friends around, how do you manage to look so lonely?"

His voice is sad, and that hurts me. I turn my head slightly, until I can nearly feel his lips against my ear. He draws back and his fingers pause in my hair for a split second, making some world-altering decision, before they continue. The knot is nearly gone.

"Sorry," I say.

"And don't apologize. Just stop with the face."

We are alone in this room of people. We are whispering to each other and nobody else is allowed into this universe of ours. Where the simple action of running fingers through hair can create earthquakes and change the alignment of the stars.

The knot is completely gone, and he's not saying anything. But he's still moving his fingers through my hair, and still breathing gently against my neck. I don't think he realizes the demons he's summoned within me. They're rising up through my throat, clawing their way to my tongue and lips and prying them open and I fear the worst when they come out. I ask myself if he really did come sit here, come untangle my hair, because he didn't like the lonely look on my face. She seems lonely, and look, now she has a tangle in her hair, I have no choice but to go over there. Take away her loneliness and her knots.

Whisper in my ear some more, I think to say. But I would never dare. Even if the demons throw the words with all their might from my mouth. We sit in silence for a little bit.

His breaths are so warm and steady. They betray the turmoil inside him, portray some kind of normalcy that has ceased to exist within him. He probably doesn't even realize that he's still smoothing the tresses of my hair, still making my scalp tingle, tingle. I can't hear my own breathing over his, and I don't want to. I wish I didn't even have to listen to my own heartbeat so I could hear his. I encase myself in him, in the smell of him, the feel of him so close. Let myself be swallowed whole.

Suddenly, I feel his fingers against the skin on the back of my neck. They move back and forth, scratching gently, until chills cover my back and I draw in a breath. I look back at him and he stops, staring at me.

"I wanted to see if you're ticklish," he blinks. He looks like he's nine years old again.

"You wanted to see if I'm ticklish?"

He shrugs, purses his lips. "I just got curious when I realized I didn't know."

I wanted to tickle you to see that lonely look on your face go away, I wish he'd say. But he would never say that, never let the child within him overtake his tyrannical adulthood. I stare at him for a few moments, the fire from his fingers still burning on my neck. I let my desires take over—for a split second. Wordlessly, I lift my own hand. I put it at the base of his neck, reach my fingers back and tickle him there just as he tickled me. He brings his shoulders up with a cringe, tilts his head to the side, and his lips curl up into a smile.

Smile for me, please, just smile.

I tickle him there until I hear his laugh, crashing through my mind. There's a flowery feeling in my ears now, a smooth and comforting ring that resonates along my entire body. I sense his laugh moving on my skin, making my stomach twist and turn in somersaults of pleasure. There's a lump in my throat, a blue bird fluttering in my chest, and I can hardly comprehend the happiness—the relief that I feel—now that I'm encased in his laughter. Now that I'm finally blinded by that smile, flashes of color dancing on his lips. He swats my hand away.

"Stop, Mikasa," he manages in the midst of his laughter. "You already know I'm ticklish." His cheeks are red now, his teeth flashing, his heart racing (I can feel it within my own). I don't realize that there are tears welling in my eyes until he asks me what's wrong, the soft smile still on his lips. A beacon of light reaching my darkest crevices. I pause to think of an answer.

"I just like to see you smile. You do it so rarely," I finally murmur. I'm afraid that my voice will crack, but it remains loyal to me this time.

Eren turns away as the tears stream down my cheeks. I don't bother wiping them. I let them go. Tomorrow when I'm strong and silent and my hair is untangled again, people will forget that they ever saw these tears.

We sit in silence again.

Without a word, understanding so well everything that I am, every desire that I've ever had, Eren continues running his fingers through my hair. I close my eyes, wait for the tears to stop, and imprint the sound of his laugh, the look of his smile, the feel of his hair and the skin of his neck, into my mind. While he breathes against me and undoes every last tangle of my hair.

 _Whisper in my ear._

 _Smile for me._

 _I'm so glad to see you smile._

 _Please, do it again._

 _Smile._


End file.
